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MAYNARD'S 

English • Classic • Series 



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SELECTED POEMS 



^ Matthew Arnold 



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NEW YaRK : 

Matnaed, Meebill, & Co., 

29, 81, AND 33 Eas''' Nineteenth Street. 



ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 

FOR 

Classes in English Literature, Reading, Grammar, etc. 

EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCHOLARS. 



Each Volume contains a Sketch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 
Explanatory Notes, etc., etc. 



1 Byron's Prophecy of Dante. 

(Cantos I. and II.) 

2 Milton's li'AIIegro, and II Pen- 

seroso. 

3 Lord Bacon's Essays, Civil and 

Moral. (.Selected.) 

4 Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. 

5 Moore's Fire Worshippers. 

(Lalla Rookh. Selected.) 

6 Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 

7 Scott's Marmion. (Selections 

from Canto VI.) 

8 Scott's Liay of the L.ast Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Canto I.) 

9 Burns'sCotter'sSaturdayNight^ 

and other Poems. 

10 Crabbe's The Village. 

11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 

(Abridgment of Part I.) 

12 Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan's 

Pilgrim's Progress. '~- 

13 Macaulay's Armada, and other 

Poems. 

14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Ve- 

nice. (Selections from Acts I., 
III., and IV.) 

15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 

16 Hogg's Queen's Wake, and Kil- 

meny. 

17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 

18 Addison's Sir lioger de Cover- 

ley. 

19 Gray's Elegfy in a Country 

Churchyard. 

20 Scott'sl^ady of the Lake. (Canto 

I.) 

21 Shakespeare's As You Like It, 

etc. (Selections.) 
23 Shakespeare's King John, and 
Richard II. (Selections.) 

23 Shakespeare's Henry IV., Hen- 

ry v., Henry VI. (Selections.),^ 

24 Shakespeare's Henry VIII., and"" 

Julius Cajsar. (Selections.) 

25 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Bk.I.) 

26 Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

27 Spenser'sFaorieOueene. (CantOS 

I. and II.) 

28 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 

29 Milton's Comus. 

30 Tennyson's Enoch Arden, The 

Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, and 
Tithonus. 



(Selec- 
Carol. 



31 Irving's Sketch Book 
tions.) 

32 Dickens's Christmas 
(Condensed.) 

33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 
(Condensed.) 

35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
field. (Condensed.) 

36 Tennyson's The Two Voices, 
and A Dream of Fair Women. 

37 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 
and MacFlecknoe. 

"40 Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving.'8 Legend of Sleepy Hol- 
low. 

42 Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare. 

•-43 Le Row's How to Teach Bead- 
Inp-, 

44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora- 
tions. 

45 The Academy Orthoiipist. A 
Manual of Pronunciation. 

'^46 Milton's Lycidas, and Hymn 
on the Nativity. 

47 Bryant's Thanatopsis, and other 
Poems. 

48 Buskin's Modern Painters. 
(Selections.) 

49 The Shakespeare Speaker. 

50 Thackeray's Roundabout Pa- 
pers. 

51 Webster's Oration on Adams 
and JefiTerson. 

52 Brown's Rah and his Friends. 

53 Morris's Life and Death of 
Jason. 

54 Burke's Speech OH American 
Taxation. 

*^5 Pope's Rape of the Lock. 

56 Tennyson's Elaine. 

57 Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

58 Church's Story of the iEneid. 

59 Church's Story of the Iliad. 

60 Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to 
Lilliput. 

61 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Ba- 
con. (Condensed.) 

62 The Alcestis of Euripides. Eng- 
lish Version by Rev. E. Potter.M. A. 

(Additioruil numbers on next page.) 



MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.-No. 211 



SELECTED POEMS 

\.^}/. BY J^ 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 



WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

E. H. TURPIN 




NEW YORK 
MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 



New Series No. 62. May 25, 1898. Published semi-weekly. Subscription price 
$10. Entered at Post Office, New York, as Seeond-Class Matter. 



WED. 



'n 



CONTENTS 



8828 



Intkoduction, . 

Shakespeare, 

Written in Emerson's Essay 

Requiescat, .... 

Stagirius, 

Human Life, 

The Second Best, . 

The Forsaken Merman, 

Worldly Place, 

East London, 

Immortality, 

To Marguerite, . 

Absence, . . . , 

The Strayed Reveler, 

Philomela, 

Dover Beach, 

Self-dependence, . 

Morality, .... 

A Summer Night, . 

Lines Written in Kensington Garden 

Austerity of Poetry, . 

The Last Word, 

Thyrsis, .... 

Memorial Verses, 

Rugby Chapel, 



PAGE 

3 
9 
9 
10 
11 
13 
14 
15 
20 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 
34 
36 
37 
38 
40 
43 
44 
45 
45 
55 
58 



Copyright, 1898, by Maynard, Merrill, & Co. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Matthew Arnold was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the 
celebrated head-master of Rugby School. He was born Decem- 
ber 24, 1822, at Laleham, near Staines. In 1836 he entered 
'Winchester School, but was removed the following year to 
Rugby, where he completed his preparation for the university. 
He maintained a high position in the school, presenting in 
1 840 a prize poem, and winning the same year a scholarship 
at Balliol College, Oxford. During his first year at the uni- 
versity he obtained the Hertford Scholarship, for proficiency 
in Latin, and later won the Newdigate Prize for English Poetry, 
with a poem entitled ' ' Cromwell. " He graduated with honors, 
and in 1845 was elected Fellow of Oriel College, just thirty 
years after the election of his father to the same honor. 
Among his colleagues here w^ere R. W. Church, Dean of St. 
Paul's, John Earle, the present Professor of Anglo-Saxon at 
Oxford, and the poet A. H. Clough. His intimacy with 
Clough grew into the closest friendship, which received its 
final seal in the tender and noble lines of " Thyrsis," an elegy 
that for exalted beauty must be placed with Milton's ' ' Lycidas " 
and Shelley's " Adonais." 

Of his life at Oxford one who knew him in those days says • 
"His perfect self-possession, the sallies of his ready wit, the 
humorous turn which he could give to any subject that he 
handled, his gayety, 'exuberance, versatility, audacity, and 
unfailing command of words, made him one of the most pop- 
ular and successful undergraduates that Oxford has ever 
known." Oxford, as the home of his intellectual life, was 
always dear to him, that "beautiful city, so venerable, so 
lovely !" who, "by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us 
near to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection." 

8 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

During his residence the university was still under the influence 
of the famous Tractarian Movement, which did so much to 
purify English religious thought. The leaders of the move- 
ment were Fellows of Oriel, and the year in which Mr. Arnold 
became Fellow of this college was the year in which Dr. New- 
man seceded to Kome. The influence of these events may be 
traced in all his writing and thinking; in apparent contradic- 
tion of his radical and analytical habit of thought, he main- 
tained through life a conservative admiration for the Estab- 
lished Church. 

From 1847 to 1851 Mr. Arnold acted as private secretary to 
the late Lord Lansdowne. He married in 1851, and the same 
year was appointed Lay Inspector of Schools, a position which 
he held with honor for nearly thirty-five years. Twice he was 
sent abroad by the government to study the school-systems of 
the Continent, and his various reports are among the most 
valuable contributions to educational literature. He labored 
zealously until the end of his life for the reform of the English 
public schools, aiming especially at the elevation of middle- 
class education, to the defects of which he traced the greater 
part of the moral, social, and political faults of English civil- 
ization. To organize middle-class education as well as it is 
organized in France and Germany was, to his mind, the "one 
thing necessary" for expelling the " Philistines" and regener- 
ating English society. 

Mr. Arnold's first appearance in literature was as a poet, 
with the now^ famous little volume of 1848, entitled "The 
Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A." In 1853 " Em- 
pedocles on Etna, and Other Poems" appeared, and soon after 
he published in his own name a volume of selections from the 
two preceding volumes, including a few new poems. The 
impression produced by his poetry was such that in 1857 he 
was elected to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, a position 
which he held for two terms, a period of ten years, at the end 
of which there was general regret that the limitation of the 
statutes did not permit a third term. During this period 
"Merope," a tragedy after the Greek manner, was published, 
followed by the celebrated " Lectures on Translating Homer," 



INTRODUCTIOlSr. 5 

and, in 1865, by the epoch-making volume of "Essays in 
Criticism," This book was a revelation in literature. By it 
criticism was endowed with a new function; it was elevated 
to the dignity of a creative art ; even poetry was made a 
" criticism of life." The author defined the new criticism to 
be " a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best 
that is known and thought in the world," and his whole liter- 
ary work was an illustration of the definition. Such a form 
of criticism was far removed from the militant omniscience of 
the Edinburgh critics, as also from the tea-table civility of the 
Lamb and Leigh Hunt school. The lesson of this volume was 
that criticism must be broadened and humanized, that it must 
be sympathetic, tempered with " sweet reasonableness," and, 
above all, truthful, endeavoring with sincerity to "see things 
as in themselves they are." With these essays a new era in 
critical writing began. England now had her own Sainte- 
Beuve. 

With this view of the true function of criticism it is not 
strange, perhaps, that Mr. Arnold's attention was often with- 
drawn from literature and devoted to social and religious 
questions. In 1870 appeared " Culture and Anarchy," an 
essay in political and social criticism, presenting a good 
illustration of the logical force of that peculiar literary style 
which in his hands was always an instrument of marvelous 
delicacy and power. His theological criticism is contained in 
" St. Paul and Protestantism," published in 1871; " Literature 
and Dogma," 1873; "God and the Bible," 1875; arid "Last 
Essays on Church and Religion," 1877. These books aroused 
bitter controversy. His earnest effort to rescue the essential 
elements of the Christian religion from the destruction threat- 
ened by dogmatic theology in the one direction and material- 
istic science in the other was regarded by many as an attack 
upon Christianity itself. 

Mr. Arnold's other published works are: "The Study of 
Celtic Literature," 1868; "Friendship's Garland," 1871; 
"Mixed Essays" and "Irish Essays," 1882; "Discourses in 
America," 1885; " Complete Poems," 1876; a volume of " Select- 
ed Poems" in the Golden Treasury Series, and a posthumous 



^ INTRODTICTION". 

volume, "Essays in Criticism, Second Series." A mere enu- 
meration of his books shows the breadth and versatility of his 
mind. He was poet, essayist, theologian, critic, philosopher; 
yet a remarkable singleness of purpose runs through all 
his work. Whatever the topic, the real theme is culture, in 
its highest sense, — the refinement and harmonious develop- 
ment of the intellect and the soul. His writing is a con- 
stant appeal to the ideal in human nature, an insistence 
upon the moral and spiritual aspects of life in contrast with 
the vulgar material aspects. As a prose stylist he is one of 
the great masters. As a poet only two, or three at most, of his 
contemporaries should be named before him. His poetry is a 
splendid embodiment of the profoundest thought and feeling 
of the period, especially of the struggle through which all 
sensitive souls are passing in the recoil before the " hopeless 
tangle of this age." 

The death of Matthew Arnold occurred suddenly, April 15, 
1888, bringing a painful shock to the thousands who had long 
been accustomed to regard him as a leader and teacher. " Not 
only the w^orld of literature, but the infinitely larger world of 
unexpressed thought and feeling and unembodied imagination, 
is sensibly the poorer for his loss." His special mission was, 
as Mr. Stedman expresses it, "that of spiritualizing what he 
deemed an era of unparalleled materialism. " His most earnest 
desire was to warn all, as he warned his " Scholar-Gypsy," to 
fly from 

" This strange disease of modern life, 
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 
Its heads overtaxed, its palsied hearts." 

And although his words of warning have often been "on 
men's impious uproar hurled," they have left a deep and per- 
manent impress upon the finer consciousness of the age. 



Aknold as a Poet. 

" He is a maker of such exquisite and thoughtful verse that it 
is hard sometimes to question his title to be considered a genuine 
poet. On the other hand, it is likely that the very grace and 
culture and thoughtfulness of his style inspire in many the first 
doubt of his claim to the name of poet. Where the art is evident 
and elaborate, we are all too apt to assume that it is all art and 
not genius. Mr. Arnold is a sort of miniature Goethe ; Ave do not 
know that his most ardent admirers could demand a higher praise 
for him, while it is probable that the description will suggest 
exactly the intellectual peculiarities which lead so many to deny 
him a place with the really inspired singers of his day."— 
McCarthy's History of Our Own Times. 

"Mr. Arnold belongs to the classical school of poetry, regarding 
the Greeks, with their strength and simplicity of phrase and their 
perfect sense of form, as his masters. To the imaginative power 
of a true poet he adds a delicacy and refinement of taste and a 
purity and severity of phrase which uncultivated readers often 
mistake for boldness. Nowhere in his poems do we find those 
hackneyed commonplaces, decked out with gaudy and ungraceful 
ornament, which pass for poetry with many people. His fault 
rather is that he is too exclusively the poet of culture. Many of 
his verses will always seem flat and insipid to those who have not 
received a classical education ; while, on the other hand, students 
of Greek literature will be disposed to praise certain of his pieces 
more highly than their intrinsic merit demands. Yet it may be 
doubted whether some of his work as a poet will not stand the 
ordeal of time better than that of any contemporary poet, Mr. 
Tennyson and Mr. Browning excepted. There are few poems 
which show such a refined sense of beauty, such dignity and self- 

7 



8 ARNOLD AS A POET. 

restraint, sucli admirable adaptation of the form to the subject, as 
Mr. Arnold's ' Sohrab and Rustum,' 'Tristram and Iseult,' and 
the 'Forsaken Merman.' " — Nicoll's Landmarks of English Lit- 
erature. 

*'His shorter meters, used as the framework of songs and 
lyrics, rarely are successful ; but through youthful familiarity 
with the Greek choruses he has caught something of their irregular 
beauty. 'The Strayed Reveler' has much of this unfettered 
charm. Arnold is restricted in the range of his affections ; but 
that he is one of those who can love very loyally the few with 
whom they do enter into sympathy, through consonance of traits 
or experiences, is shown in the emotional poems entitled ' Faded 
Leaves' and 'Indifference,' and in later pieces, which display 
more fluency, ' Calais Sands ' and ' Dover Beach.' A prosaic man- 
ner injures many of his lyrics ; at least he does not seem clearly 
to distinguish between the functions of poetry and of prose. He 
is more at ease in long, stately, swelling measures, whose graver 
movement accords with a serious and elevated purpose. Judged 
as works of art, ' Sohrab and Rustum ' and ' Balder Dead ' really 
are majestic poems. Their blank verse, while independent of 
Tennyson's, is the result, like that of the ' Mort d' Arthur,' of its 
author's Homeric studies ; is somewhat too slow in ' Balder Dead,' 
and fails of the antique simplicity, but is terse, elegant, and 
always in 'the grand manner.' Upon the whole this is a remark- 
able production ; it stands at the front of all experiments in a 
field remote as the northern heavens and almost as glacial and 
clear. . . . ' Sohrab and Rustum ' is a still finer poem, because more 
human and more complete in itself. The verse is not so devoid 
of epic swiftness. The powerful conception of the relations be- 
tween the two chieftains and the slaying of the son by the father 
are tragical and heroic." — Stedman's Victorian Poets. 



SELECTED POEMS 



Shakespeare 



Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
We ask and ask. Thou smilest, and art still, 
Out-topping- knowledge. For the loftiest hill, 
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, 

Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, 
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, 
Spares but the cloudy border of his base 
To the foiled searching of mortality; 

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honored, self-secure, 
Didst tread on earth unguessed at. — Better so! 

All pains the immortal spirit must endure. 

All weakness which impairs, all griefs w^hich bow. 

Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. 



Written in Emerson's Essays 

" O MONSTROUS, dead, unprofitable world, 

That thou canst hear, and hearing hold thy way! 

A. voice oracular hath pealed to-day, 

To-day a hero's banner is unfurled; 



10 REQUIESCAT 

" Hast thou no lip for welcome? " — So I said. 
Man after man, the world smiled and passed by; 
A smile of wistful incredulity, 
As though one spake of life unto the dead, — 

Scornful and strange, and sorrowful, and full 
Of bitter knowledge. Yet the will is free; 
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful; 

The seeds of godlike jDower are in us still; 
Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will! — 
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery? 

Requiescat ^ 

Strew on her roses, roses, 

And never a spray of yew: 
In quiet she ref)Oses; 

Ah! would that I did too! 

Her mirth the world required; 

She bathed it in smiles of glee. 
But her heart was tired, tired. 

And now they let her be. 

Her life was turning, turning. 

In mazes of heat and sound; 
But for peace her soul was yearning, 

And now peace laps ^ her round. 

Her cabined,^ ample spirit. 

It fluttered and failed for breath; 
I To-night it doth inherit 
The vasty "" hall of death. 

1. Requiescat : The first word of the Latin petition for the rest of 
a departed ^onX— requiescat in pace. 

2. Laps : Wraps. 

3. Cabined : Hampered ; confined in narrow limits. 

4. Vasty (Poetical) : Vast. 



STAGIRIUS 11 



Stagirius ' 

Thou, who dost dwell alone; 
Thou, who dost know thine own; 
Thou, to whom all are known 
From the cradle to the grave, — 

Save, oh! save. 
From the world's temptations. 
From tribulations. 
From that fierce ang'uish 
Wherein we languish. 
From that torpor deep 
Wherein we lie asleep. 
Heavy as death, cold as the grave. 

Save, oh! save. 

When the soul, growing clearer, 

Sees God no nearer; 
When the soul, mounting higher. 

To God comes no nigher; 
But the arch-fiend Pride 
Mounts at her side, 
Foiling her high emprise,^ 
Sealing ' her eagle eyes. 
And, when she fain would soar, 
Makes idols to adore, 



1. Stagirius : This poem has more passionate aspiration than Arnold 
elsewhere expresses. It was reprinted in some American papers under 
the amusing title of Matthew Arnold'' s Litany. Stagirins was a young 
monk to whom St. Chrysosfom dedicated three books. 

2. Emprise (Archaic) : An enterprise, especially an adventurous or 
chivalric one. 

3. Sealing or seeling (L. ciliiim. eyelid) : Blinding; closing the eyes 
by means of threads drawn through the lids. This was a part of the 
process of taming hawks and other birds used in the sport of falconry. 
Cf. Othello i. 3, 297. 



12 STAGIRIUS 

Changing the pure emotion 
Of her high devotion, 
To a skin-deep sense 
Of her own eloquence; 
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave, — 
Save, oh! save. 

From the ingrained fashion 
Of this earthly nature 
That mars thy creature; 
From grief that is but passion. 
From mirth that is but feigning, 
From tears that bring no healing, 
From wild and weak complaining. 
Thine old strength revealing. 
Save, oh! save. 

From doubt, where all is double; 
Where wise men are not strong. 
Where comfort turns to trouble, 
Where just men suffer wrong; 
Where sorrow treads on joy. 
Where sweet things soonest cloy, 
W^here faiths are built on dust. 
Where love "Is half mistrust, 
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea. 

Oh! set us free. 
Oh, let the false dream fly. 
Where our sick souls do lie 
Tossing continually! 

Oh, where thy voice doth come, 

Let all doubts be dumb, 

Let all words be mild, 

All strifes be reconciled. 

All pains beguiled! 

Light bring no blindness, 



HUMAN LIFE 13 

Love no unkindness, 
Knowledge no ruin, 
Fear no undoing! 
From the cradle to the grave, 
Save, oh! save. 

Human Life 

What mortal, when he saw. 

Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, 

Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly,— 

" I have kept uninfringed my nature's law; 

The inly-written chart thou gavest me, 

To guide me, I have steered by to the end"? 

Ah! let us make no claim, 

On life's incognizable sea. 

To too exact a steering of our way; 

Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim, 

If some fair coast has lured us to make stay, 

Or some friend hailed us to keep company. 

Ay! we would each fain drive 

At random, and not steer by rule. 

Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain! 

Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive; ^ 

We rush by coasts where we had lief remain: 

Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool. 

No! as the foaming swath ^ 

Of torn-up water, on the main. 

Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar 

On either side the black deep-furrowed path 

Cut by an onw^ard-laboring vessel's prore,^ 

And never touches the ship-side again; 

1. Rive: Tear apunder by force. 

2. Swath : A row of cut grass or grain— here used figuratively. 

3. Prore (Poetical and rare) : The prow of a ship; prora. 



14 THE SECOND BEST 

Even so we leave behind, 

As, chartered by some unknown Powers, 

We stem across the sea of life by night, 

The joys which were not for our use designed, — 

The friends to whom we had no natural right. 

The homes that were not destined to be ours. 



The Second Best i 

MoDEEATE tasks and moderate leisure, 
Quiet living, strict-kept measure 
Both in suffering and in pleasure, — 
'Tis for this thy nature yearns. 

But so many books thou readest. 
But so many schemes thou breedest, 
But so many wishes feedest, 

That thy poor head almost turns. 

And (the world's so madly jangled, 
Human things so fast entangled) 
Nature's wish must now be strangled 
For that best which she discerns. 

So it must be! yet, while leading 
A strained life, while over-feeding, 
Like the rest, his wit with reading. 
No small profit that man earns, — 

Who through all he meets can steer him, 
Can reject what cannot clear him. 
Cling to what can truly cheer him; 
Who each day more surely learns 



1. The Second Best: The ideal of existence, Arnold affirms, is 
moderation in all things, " that general balance of body and soul which 
makes a man his own master " ; the next best thing is constancy to the 
watchwords, "Hope, Light, Persistence." 



THE FORSAKEN MERMAN 15 

That an impulse, from the distance 
Of his deeiJest, best existence, 
To the words, " Hope, Light, Persistence," 
Strongly sets and truly burns. 



The Forsaken Merman ^ 

Come, dear children, let us away; 
Down and away below! 
Now my brothers call from the bay, 
Now the great winds shoreward blow. 
Now the salt tides seaward flow; 
Now the wild white horses play, 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 
Children dear, let us away! 
This way, this way! 

Call her once before you go, — 

Call once yet! 

In a voice that she will know, — 

"Margaret! Margaret! " 

Children's voices should be dear 

(Call once more) to a mother's ear; 

Children's voices, wild with pain, — 

Surelj^ she will come again! 

Call her once, and come away; 

This way, this w^ay! 

" Mother dear, we cannot stay! 

The wild white horses foam and fret." 

Margaret ! Margaret ! 

Come, dear children, come away down: 
Call no more! 

1. The Forsaken Merman : This beautiful romance of Northern 
seas is deservedly one of the most popular of Arnold's poems. " Its 
rhythm suggests the wild music of the Baltic fretted by the restless 
wind," 



16 THE FORSAKEN MERMAN 

One last look at the white-walled town, 

And the little gray church on the windy shore; 

Then come down! 

She will not come, though you call all day; 

Come away, come away! 

Children dear, was it j^esterday 

We heard the sweet bells over the bay, — 

In the caverns where we lay. 

Through the surf and through the swell, 

The far-off sound of a silver bell? 

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, 

Where the winds are all asleep; 

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, 

Where the salt weed sways in the stream. 

Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round. 

Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; 

Where the sea-snakes coll and twine. 

Dry their mail and bask in the brine; 

Where great whales come sailing by, 

Sail and sail, with unshut eye. 

Round the world for ever and aj^e? 

When did music come this way? 

Children dear, was it yesterday? 

Children dear, was it yesterday 

(Call yet once) that she went away? 

Once she sate with you and me. 

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, 

And the youngest sate on her knee. 

She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well, 

When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. 

She sighed, she looked up through the clear green 

sea; 
She said, " I must go, for my kinsfolk pray 
In the little gray church on the shore to-day. 



THE FORSAKEX MERMAN 17 

'Twill be Easter-time in the world — ah me! 
And I lose my poor soul, merman! here with thee." 
I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves; 
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea- 
caves!" 
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. 

Children dear, was it yesterday? 

Children dear, were we long alone? 

"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; 

Long prayers," I said, " in the world they say; 

Come! " I said; and we rose through the surf in the 

bay. 
We went up the beach, by the sandy down 
Where the sea-stocks^ bloom, to the white-walled 

town; 
Through the narrow paved streets, where all was 

still. 
To the little gray church on the windy hill. 
From the church came a murmur of folk at their 

prayers. 
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. 
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with 

rains. 
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded 

panes. 
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: 
"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here! 
Dear heart," I said, " we are long alone; 
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." 
But, ah! she gave me never a look. 
For her eyes were sealed ^ to the Holy Book. 
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. 3 

1. Sea-stocks : Sea-gillyflowers, 

2. Sealed : Fastened. 

3. Shut stands the door : According to the northern superstition 
there are creatures of the sea and forest against whom heaven's gate is 
shut forever. 



18 THE FORSAKEN MEEMAN 

Come away, children, call no more! 
Come away, come down, call no more! 

Dowai, down, down! 

Down to the depths of the sea! 

She sits at her wheel in the humming- town, 

Singing- most joyfully. 

Hark what she sings: " O joy, O joy, 

For the humming street, and the child with its toy! 

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; 

For the wheel where I spun, 

And the blessed light of the sun! " 

And so she sings her fill, 

Singing- most joyfully. 

Till the spindle drops from her hand, 

And the whizzing wheel stands still. 

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand. 

And over the sand at the sea; 

And her eyes are set in a stare; 

And anon ^ there breaks a sigh, 

And anon there drops a tear, 

From a sorrow-clouded eye, 

And a heart .sorrow-laden, 

A long, long sigh, 

For the cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden. 

And the gleam of her golden hair. 

Come away, away, children; 
Come, children, come down! 
The hoarse wind blows colder; 
Lights shine in the town. 
She will start from her slumber 
When gusts shake the door: 
She will hear the winds howling. 
Will hear the waves roar. 

1. Anon (AS. on an, in one) : Soon; presently; its original meaning 
was, at once. 



/ 



THE FORSAKEN MERMAN 19 



We shall see, while above us 
The waves roar and whirl, 
A ceiling" of amber, 
A pavement of pearl. 
Singing-, " Here came a mortal, 
But faithless was she! 
And alone dwell forever 
The kings of the sea." 

But, children, at midnight, 

When soft the winds blow, 

When clear falls the moonlight. 

When spring-tides are low; 

When sweet airs come seaward 

From heaths starred with broom, 

And high rocks throw mildly 

On the blanched sands a gloom; 

Up the still, glistening beaches, 

Up the creeks we will hie,^ 

Over banks of bright seaweed 

The ebb-tide leaves dry. 

We will gaze, from the sand-hills. 

At the white sleeping town; 

At the church on the hill-side. 

And then come back down. 

Singing, " There dwells a loved one. 

But cruel is she! 

She left lonely forever 

The kings of the sea. ' 

5. Hie (AS. higian) : Hasten. 



20 EAST LONDON 



Worldly Place ' 

Even in a palace, life may he led well! 

So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, 

Marcus Aurelius/ But the stifling- den 

Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, 

Our freedom for a little bread we sell, 
And drudge under some foolish master's ken 
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen, — 
Matched with a palace, is not this a hell? 

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere. 

Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came; 

And when my ill-schooled spirit is aflame 

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, 
I'll stop, and say, " There were no succor here! 
The aids to noble life are all within." 

East London 

'TwAS August, and the fierce sun overhead 
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,^ 
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen 
In Spitalfields,- looked thrice dispirited. 

1. Arnold, himself the characteristic poet of modern stoicism, found 
a kindred spirit in Marcus A nrelius (a. d. 138-161), a stoic philosopher, 
the best of the Roman emperors. In the Meditations of Marcus 
Aurelius, a collection of thoughts and maxims breathing the purest 
piety and benevolence, occurs this passage : 

" Such as are thy habitual thoughts; such also will be the character of 
thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a 
continuous series of such thoughts as these : for instance, that where a 
man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in a palace; 
— well, then he can also live well in a ^diXsicey— Meditations of Marcus 
Aurelius, F. 16 QLong's translation). 

2. Bethnal Green and Spitalfields are districts of East London 
which are inhabited by silk weavers and other poor people. 



IMMORTALITY 21 

I met a preacher there I knew, and said, — 
" 111 and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene? " 
"Bravely! " said he; "for I of late have been 
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living 
hread." 

O human soul! as long as thou canst so 
Set up a mark of everlasting- light, 
Above the howling- senses' ebb and flow, 

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam, — 
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night! 
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy 
home. 



Immortality 

Foiled by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn, 
We leave the brutal world to take its way. 
And, Patience! in another life, we say, 
The world shall he thrust down, and ice upborne. 

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will tliey 
Who failed under the heat of this life's day 
Support the fervors of the heavenlj^ morn? 

No, no! the energy of life may be 

Kept on after the grave, but not begun; 

And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, 

From strength to strength advancing, — only he, 
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won. 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 



22 TO MARGUERITE 



To Marguerite ' 

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,^ 

With echoing straits between us thrown, 

Dotting- the shoreless watery wild, 

We mortal millions live alone. 

The islands feel the enclasping flow, 

And then their endless bounds they know. 

But when the moon their hollows lights, 
And they are swept by balms of spring. 
And in their glens, on starry nights, 
The nightingales divinely sing; 
And lovely notes, from shore to shore, 
Across the sounds and channels pour, — 

Oh! then a longing like despair 

Is to their farthest caverns sent; 

For surely once, they feel, we were 

Parts of a single continent! 

Now round us spreads the watery plain: 

Oh, might our marges meet again! 

Who ordered that their longing's fire 
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? 
Who renders vain their deep desire? — 
A God, a God their severance ruled! 
And bade betwixt their shores to be 
The unplumbed,3 salt, estranging sea. 

1. To Marguerite ; These lines express a thought frequent to us all, 
but never before worded with such clearness and beauty. 

2. Enisled (poetical and rare) : Literally, placed on an island; hence, 
isolated. 

3. The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea : This is one of Arnold's 
most impressive and felicitous lines. " Without any false emphasis or 
prolix dwelling on the matter, it shadows out to you the plunging 



ABSENCE 23 



Absence 



In this fair stranger's eyes of gray, 

Thine eyes, my love! I see. 
I shiver; for the j)assing- day 

Had borne me far from thee. 

This is the curse of life! that not 

A nobler, calmer train 
Of wiser thoughts and feelings \)lot 

Our passions from our brain; 

But each day brings its petty dust. 
Our soon-choked souls to fill; 

And we forget because we must. 
And not because we will. 

I struggle towards the light; and ye, 
Once-longed-for storms of love! 

If with the light ye cannot be, 
I bear that ye remove. 

I struggle towards the light; but oh, 

While yet the night is chill, 
Upon time's barren, stormy flow. 

Stay with me, Marguerite, still! 

deep-sea lead and the eerie cry of ' no soundings'; it recalls that salt- 
ness of the sea which takes from water every refreshing association, 
every quality that helps to slake thirst or supply s;ip, and then it con- 
centrates all these dividing attributes, which strike a sort of lonely 
terror into the soul, into the one word ' estranging.' It is a line full of 
intensity, simplicity, and grandeur— a line to possess and haunt the 
imagination. And the same exceptional force of expression comes out 
not unfrequently under the shadow of similar emotion."—^. //. 
Hutton. 



24 THE STEAYED REVELER 

The Strayed Reveler ^ 

THE PORTICO OF CIRCE's '^ PALACE. EVENING 

A Youth. Circe 

THE YOUTH 

Faster, faster, 

Circe, goddess. 

Let the wil(^, throng-ing- train, 
The bright procession 
Of eddying forms. 
Sweep through my soul! 

Thou standest, smiling 

Down on me! thy right arm, 

Leaned up against the column there, 

Props thy soft cheek; 

Thy left holds, hanging loosely, 

The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,^ 

1 held but now. 

Is it then evening 

So soon? I see, the night-dews, 

L The Strayed Reveler: Arnold says that the two great world- 
forces are Hebraism and Hellenism. Carlyle may be taken for the 
exponent of the one in the nineteenth centnry, and Arnold himself as 
the representative of the other. Arnold's especial contribution to Eng- 
lish literature is an embodiment of the thought and sentiment of Greek 
poetry which it never before possessed. His, however, was a " sad 
lucidity of soul," while that of the Greeks was joyous. The Strayed 
Beveler is a vivid reproduction of Greek style and spirit. As Stedman 
has remarked, in this poem Arnold caught much of the irregular beauty 
of the Greek choruses with which he was early familiar. 

2. Circe : A famous sorceress, the daughter of Helios and Perse. 
The Greek hero, Ulysses, in his ten years' wandering after the fall of 
Troy, was cast upon the shores of her island, ^sea, and there abode 
a year. 

3, Cinctured (L, cingOy gird) : Figuratively, encircled, encompassed. 



THE STRAYED REVELER 25 

Clustered in thick beads, dim 
The agate brooch-stones 
On thy white shoulder; 
The cool night-wind, too. 
Blows throug-h the portico, 
Stirs thy hair, goddess. 
Waves thy white robe! 

CIRCE 

"Whence art thou, sleeper? 

THE YOUTH 

When the white daw n first 

Through the rough fir-planks 

Of my hut, by the chestnuts, 

Up at the valley-head. 

Came breaking, goddess! 

I sprang up, I threw round me 

My dappled fawn-skin; 

Passing out, from the wet turf, 

Where they lay, by the hut door, 

I snatched up my vine-crown, my fir-staff,^ 

All drenched in dew, — 

Came swift down to join 

The rout early gathered 

In the town, round the temple, 

lacchus' - Avhite fane 

On yonder hill. 

Quick I passed, following 
The woodcutters' cart-track 

1. Vine-crown, fir-staff : The wreath of vine-leaves and the thyrsus, 
a staff entwined with ivy and surmounted by a pine-cone, were Bacchic 
symbols. 

2. lacchus, or Bacchus (Gr. Dionysus) : The god of wine, also 
of animal life and vegetation. He was represented as having his fore- 
head crowned with vine-leaves or ivy ; he was worshiped by Bac- 
chanals or Bacchantes, and attended by satyrs, Sileni, and maenads. 



26 THE STRAYED REVELER 

Down the dark valley. I saw 

On my left, through the beeches, 

Thy palace, goddess, 

Smokeless, empty! 

Trembling, I entered; beheld 

The court all silent, 

The lions sleeping, 

On the altar this bowl. 

I drank, goddess! 

And sank down here, sleeping, 

On the steps of thy portico. 

CIRCE 

Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou? 

Thou lovest it, then, my wine? 

Wouldst more of it? See how glows. 

Through the delicate, flushed marble, 

The red creaming liquor. 

Strewn with dark seeds! 

Drink, then! I chide thee not. 

Deny thee not my bowl. 

Come, stretch forth thy hand, then — so! 

Drink — drink again! 

THE YOUTH 

Thanks, gracious one! 
Ah, the sweet fumes again! 
More soft, ah me! 
More subtle-winding, 
Than Pan's flute-music! 
Faint^ — faint! Ah me. 
Again the sweet sleep! 



Hist! Thou— within there! 
Come forth, Ulysses! 



THE STRAYED REVELER 27 

Art tired with hunting? 
While we range the woodland, 
See what the day brings. 

ULYSSES 

Ever new magic! 

Hast thou then lured hither, 

Wonderful goddess, by thy art. 

The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,^ 

laechus' darling. 

Or some youth beloved of Pan, 

Of Pan and the nymphs; 

That he sits, bending downward 

His white, delicate neck 

To the ivy-wreathed marge 

Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves 

That crown his hair. 

Falling forward, mingling 

With the dark ivy-plants; 

His fawn-skin, half untied. 

Smeared with red w^ine-stains? Who is he. 

That he sits, overweighed 

By fumes of wine and sleep, 

So late, in thy portico? 

What youth, goddess, — what guest 

Of gods or mortals? 

CIRCE 

Hist! he wakes! 

I lured him not hither, Ulysses. 

Nay, ask him! 

THE YOUTH 

Who speaks? Ah! who comes forth 
To thy side, goddess, from within? 
How shall I name him, — 

L Ampelus : The personification of the vine— a beautiful youth, son 
of a satyr and a nymph, beloved by Bacchus. 



28 THE STRAYED EEVELER 

This spare, dark-featured, 

Quick-eyed stranger? 

Ah! and I see too 

His sailor's bonnet, 

His short coat, travel-tarnished, 

With one arm bare! — 

Art thou not he, whom fame 

This long- time rumors 

The favored guest of Circe, brought by the waves? 

Art thou he, stranger, — 

The wise Ulysses, 

Laertes' son? 

ULYSSES 



I am Ulysses. 

And thou too, sleeper? 

Thy voice is sweet. 

It may be thou hast followed 

Through the islands gome divine bard. 

By age taught many things, — 

Age, and the Muses; 

And heard him delighting 

The chiefs and people 

In the banquet, and learned his songs. 

Of gods and heroes, 

Of war and arts. 

And peopled cities, 

Inland, or built 

By the gray sea. If so, then hail! 

I honor and welcome thee. 



THE YOUTH 



The gods are happy. 
They turn on all sides 
Their shining eyes. 
And see below them 
The earth and men. 



THE STRAYED REVELER 2^ 

They see Tiresias ^ 

Sitting, staff in hand, 

On the warm, grassy 

Asopus - bank. 

His robe drawn over 

His old sightless head, 

Revolving inly 

The doom of Thebes. 

They see the centaurs * 
In the npper glens 
Of Pelion,* in the streams 
Where red-berried ashes fringe 
The clear-brown shallow pools. 
With streaming flanks, and heads 
Reared proudly, snuffing 
The mountain wind. 

They see the Indian 

Drifting, knife in hand, 

His frail boat moored to 

A floating isle thick-matted 

With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants, 

And the dark cucumber. 

He reaps and stows them. 

Drifting — drifting; round him. 

Round his green harvest-plot, 

Flow the cool lake-weaves. 

The mountains ring them. 

They see the Scythian 

On the wide steppe, unharnessing 

1. Tiresias : The blind prophet of Thebes, who perished in the flight 
from the city when it was razed by the Epigoni. (Jf. Tennyson's Tiresias. 

2. Asopus : A river of Greece. 

3. Centaurs : Fabulous monsters of antiquity, half men, half horses. 

4. Pelion : A lofty mountain of Thessaly, near whose summit was 
the cave of Cheiron, the wisest and best of the centaurs. 



30 THE STRAYED REVELER 

His wheeled house at noon. 

He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal, — 
Mares' milk, and bread 
Baked on the embers. All around. 
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick- 
starred 
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock 
And flag-leaved iris-flowers. 
Sitting in his cart 

He makes his meal; before him, for long miles, 
Alive with bright green lizards. 
And the springing bustard-fowl, 
The track, a straight black line, 
Furrows the rich soil; here and there 
Clusters of lonely mounds 
Topped with rough-hewn. 
Gray, rain-bleared statues, overpeer 
The sunny w^aste. 

They see the ferry 

On the broad, clay-laden 

Lone Chorasmian stream; ^ thereon. 

With snort and strain, 

Two horses, strongly swimming, tow 

The ferry-boat, with woven ropes 

To either bow 

Firm-harnessed by the mane; a chief, 

W^ith shout and shaken spear, 

Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern 

The cowering merchants in long robes 

Sit pale beside their wealth 

Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops, 

Of gold and ivory. 

Of turquoise-earth, and amethyst, 

1. Chorasmian stream: The Oxus, so called from the Chorasmians, 
a people who inhabited the banks and islands of the lower course of 
the river. Cf. note below on Oxus. 



THE STRAYED REVELER 31 

Jasper and chalcedonj^ 

And milk-barred onyx-stones. 

The loaded boat swings groaning- 

In the yellow eddies; 

The gods behold them. 

They see the heroes 

Sitting in the dark ship 

On the foamless, long-heaving, 

Violet sea, 

At sunset nearing 

The Happy Islands.^ 

These things, Ulysses, 
The wise bards also 
Behold, and sing. 
But oh, what labor! 
O prince, what pain! . 

They too can see 
Tiresias; but the gods, 
Who gave them vision, 
Added this law: 
That they should bear too 
His groping blindness. 
His dark foreboding', 
He scorned white hairs; 
Bear Hera's anger 
Through a life lengthened 
To seven ages. 

They see the centaurs 

On Pelion: then they feel, 

They too, the maddening wine 

Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain 

1. The Happy Islands, or the Islands of the Blest, were imaginary 
islands far in the west, to wlii.ch the favorite^ of the Gods were con- 
veyed after death. 



32 THE STRAYED REVELER 

They feel the biting- spears 

Of the grim Lapithse,' and Theseus,^ drive, 

Drive crashing- through their bones; they feel, 

Hig-h on a jutting rock in the red stream, 

Alcmena's^ dreadful son 

Ply his bow^ Such a price 

The g-ods exact for song-: 

To become v^hat we sing. 

They see the Indian 

On his mountain lake; but squalls 

Make their skitf reel, and worms 

In the unkind spring have gnawn 

Their melon-harvest to the heart. They see 

The Scythian; but long frosts 

Parch them in winter-time on the bare steppe. 

Till they too fade like grass; they crawl 

Like shadows forth in spring. 

They see the merchants 

On the Oxus-stream; * but care 

Must visit first them too, and make them pale: 

Whether, through whirling sand, 

A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst 



1. The centaurs were guests at the marriage-feast of Pirithoiis, king 
of the Lapithse, and Hippodamia. Being intoxicated, they were guilty, 
of unseemly conduct ; this was resented by Pirithoiis and his friends, 
and there followed a fierce conflict in which several centaurs were 
killed. This battle of the Lapithae and centaurs was a favorite subject 
with the poets and sculptors of antiquity. 

2. Theseus : The great national hero of Greek legend, was a friend of 
Pirithoiis, and aided him in the fight with the centaurs. 

3. Alcmena's dreadful son : Heracles, the hero famous for his 
" twelve labors," was the son of Jupiter and Alcmena. In his pursuit 
of the Erymanthian boar he became embroiled with some of the cen- 
taurs, and accidentally killed his centaur friend Pholus with one of the 
arrows anointed with the deadly poison of the Lernean hydra. 

4. Oxus : A great river of central Asia, supposed to be the Araxes of 
Herodotus; its modern name is Jihoun or Amou. It was the boundary 
between the great monarchies of southwestern Asia and the hordes 
which roamed the central steppes. 



THE STRAYED REVELER 

Upon their caravan; or greedy kings, 

In the walled cities the way passes through, 

Crushed them with tolls; or fever-airs, 

On some great river's marge, 

INIown them down, far from home. 

They see the heroes 

Near harbor; but they share 

Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,- 

Seven-gated Thebes,^ or Troy; ^ 

Or where the echoing oars 

Of Argo - first 

Startled the unknown sea. 

The old Silenus ^ 

Came, lolling in the sunshine, 

From the dewy forest-coverts. 

This way, at noon. 

Sitting by me, while his fauns 

Down at the water-side 

Sprinkled and smoothed 

His drooping garland. 

He told these things. 

But I, Ulysses, 
Sitting on the warm steps, 
Looking over the valley, 
All day long, have seen. 
Without pain, without labor, 



33 



1. Each of the seven heroes who fought to restore Poly n ices to power 
in Thebes attaclied one of the seven gates of the city; Thebes was finally 
destroyed by their sons, the Epigoni. After a ten years' siege Troy 
was taken and razed by the Greek heroes in revenge for the abduction 
of Helen by Parish prince of Troy. These sieges were favorite themes 
with the Greek poets-one being the subject of ihe Thebaid, the other 
of the Mad. 

2. Argo : This was the fifty-oared vessel built by Argus for Jason 
and his fellow-heroes to go in search of the Golden Fleece. 

3. Silenus : The son of Pan and a nymph, was the oldest of the 
satyrs, and the guardian and tutor of young Bacchus. 



34 PHILOMELA 

Sometimes a wild-haired maenad,^ 
Sometimes a faun with torches, 
And sometimes, for a moment, 
Passing- through the dark stems 
riowing--robed, the beloved, 
The desired, the divine, 
Beloved laechus. 

Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars! 

Ah, g-limmering water. 

Fitful earth-murmur. 

Dreaming" woods! 

Ah, g-olden-haired, strangely smiling- goddess 

And thou, proved, much-enduring. 

Wave-tossed wanderer! 

Who can stand still? 

Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me — 

The cup again! 

Faster, faster, 

O Circe, goddess, 

Let the wild, thronging train, 

The bright procession 

Of eddying forms, 

Sweep through my soul! 



Philomela ^ 

Hark! ah, the nightingale — 

The tawny-throated! 

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst! 

What triumph! hark! what pain! 

1. Maenad : A woman attendant of Bacchus. 

2. Philomela : According to Greek mythology, Pandion, king of 
Athens, gave his daughter Progne in marriage to his ally, Tereus, king 
of Thrace. Desiring her sister Philomela for his wife, Tereus pre- 
tended that Progne was dead, and, to keep her from revealing the truth, 
he tore out her tongue and confined her in a cage. She embroidere4 



PHILOMELA 35 

O wanderer from a Grecian shore, 

Still, after many years, in distant lands, 

Still nourishing- in thy bewildered brain 

That wild,unquenched,deep-snnken, old-world pain — 

Say, will it never heal? 

And can this fragrant lawn 

With its cool trees, and nig-ht, 

And the sweet, tranquil Thames, 

And moonshine, and the dew, 

To thy racked heart and brain 

Afford no balm? 

Dost thou to-night behold, 

Here, through the moonlight on this Eng'lish grass, 

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? 

Dost thou again peruse 

With hot cheeks and seared eyes 

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? 

Dost thou once more assay 

Thy flight, and feel come over thee, 

Poor fugitive, the feathery change 

Once more, and once more seem to make resound 

With love and hate, triumph and agony. 

Lone Daulis,^ and the high Cephissian - vale? 

Listen, Eugenia, — 

How thick the bursts come crowding through the 

leaves! 
Again — thou hearest? 
Eternal passion! 
Eternal pain! 

the story of her wrongs on a piece of tapestry which she contrived to 
send Philomela. As the two sisters lied from the "unfriendly palace" 
they were pursued by Tereus, but at their prayer the gods changed 
them into birds— Philomela into a nightingale, Progne a swallow, and 
Tereus a lapwing. In order to account for the silence of the nightin- 
gale except in spring, the Latin poets changed the story, saying that it 
was Philomela whose tongne was cut out. Cf. Ovid's Metamorphoses. 

1. Daulis : A Phociaii town, the residence of Tereus. 

2. Cephissian vale : The Cephissus is a river of Greece, which 
flows through Phocis. 



36 DOVER BEACH 



Dover Beach 

The sea is calm to-night. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; on the French coast, the lig-ht 

Gleams and is g-one; the cliffs of England stand, 

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand, 

Listen! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand. 

Begin and cease, and then again begin. 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 

The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles ^ long ago 

Heard it on the Mgean, and it brought 

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery: we 

Find also in the sound a thought. 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The sea of faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 

1. Sophocles (b. c. 496-406) : One of the three great Greek tragic 
poets, the other two heing ^schyhis and Euripides. 
Cf. Sophocles' Maidens of Trachis : 

" For as one sees, when north or south wind blows 
In strength invincible. 
Full many a wave upon the ocean wide, 
Sweeping and rushing on, 
So like a Cretan sea, 
The stormy grief of life 
Now bringeth low the son of Cadmus old, 
Now lifts him up again." 
There is a similar figure in CEdipus at Colonos. 



SELF-DEPENDENCE 3Y 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing- roar, 

Eetreating-, to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edg-es drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

Ah, love, let ns be true 

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams. 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Ilath reallj^ neither joy, nor love, nor light. 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight. 

Where ignorant armies clash by night. 



Self-Dependence ^ 

Weaey of myself, and sick of asking 

What I am, and what I ought to be. 

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 

Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 

O'er the sea and to the stars I send: 

" Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me. 

Calm me, ah, compose me to the end! 

Ah, once more," I cri^d, " ye stars, ye waters, 
On my heart your mightj^ charm renew; 
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you. 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you! " 



1. Self-dependence : Cf. Quiet Work and A Siimme?' Mght. It was 
not so much the wild beauty, grandeur, and activity of Nature which 
appealed to Arnold as her order, stability, and submission to law; 
hence he drew life-lessous of peace for restlessness, strength for 
weakness. 



38 MORALITY 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 

Over the lit sea's unquiet way. 

In the rustling night-air came the answer, — 

" Wouldst thou T)e as these are? Live as they. 

" Unaifrighted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see. 
These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

" And with joy the stars i)erform their shining. 
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll; 
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

" Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
In what state God's other works may be, 
lu their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
These attain the mighty life you see." 

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear, 
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear, — 
" Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he 
Who finds himself loses his misery! " 



Morality ^ 

We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire which in the heart resides; 

The spirit bloweth and is still. 

In mystery our soul abides. 

But tasks in hours of insight willed 

Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. 

1. Morality : This poem strikingly expresses the truth that man's 
moral life is superior to nature's power; as Sir Thomas Browne says, 
" there is surely a piece of divinity in us— something that was before 
the elements and owes no homage to the eun." 



MORALITY 39 

With aching- hands and bleeding feet 
We dig- and heap, lay stone on stone; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long- daj^ and wish 'twere done. 

Not till the hours of light return, 

All we have built do we discern. 

Then, when the clouds are off the soul, 

When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, 

Ask how she viewed thy self-control, 

Thy struggling, tasked morality, — 

Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, 
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. 

And she, whose censure thou dost dread, 

Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, 

See, on her face a glow is spread, 

A strong emotion on her cheek! 

"Ah, child! " she cries, "that strife divine, 
Whence was it, for it is not mine? 

" There is no effort on my brow; 

I do not strive, I do not weep: 

I rush with the swift spheres, and glow 

In joy, and when I will, I sleep. 
Yet that severe, that earnest air, 
I. saw, I felt it once — but where? 

" I knew not yet the gauge of time, 
Nor wore the manacles of space; 
I felt it in some other clime, 
I saw^ it in some other place. 

'TM-as when the heavenly house I trod, 

And lay upon the breast of God." 



40 A SUMMER NIGHT 



A Summer Night ' 

In the deserted, moon-blanched street, 

How lonely rings the echo of my feet! 

Those windows, which I gaze at, frown, 

Silent and white, unopening down, 

Eepellent as the world; but see, 

A break between the housetops shows 

The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim 

Into the dewy dark obscurity 

Down at the far horizon's rim. 

Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose! 

And to my mind the thought 

Is on a sudden brought 

Of a past night, and a far different scene. 

Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep 

As clearly as at noon; 

The spring-tide's brimming flow 

Heaved dazzlingly between; 

Houses, with long white sweep, 

Girdled the glistening bay; 

Behind, through the soft air. 

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away. 

That night was far more fair — 

But the same restless pacings to and fro, 

And the same vainly throbbing heart was there, 

And the same bright, calm moon. 

And the calm moonlight seems to say, — 
" Hast thou, then, still the old unquiet breast, 
Which neither deadens into rest. 
Nor ever feels the fiery glow 

1. A Summer Night: "After depicting the exhausting duties 
assigned by the world to the world's laborers, and the disastrous 
wreck which falls upon them who break away from the world's fetters, 
he concludes in a strain somewhat more explicit than usual, by affirm- 



A SUMMER NIGHT 41 

That whirls the spirit from itself away, 

But fluctuates to and fro, 

Never by passion quite possessed, 

And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? " 

And I, I know not if to pray 

Still to be what I am, or yield, and be 

Like all the other men 1 see. 

For most men in a brazen j)i'ison live, 

Where, in the sun's hot eye, 

With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly 

Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give, 

Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall. 

And as, year after year. 

Fresh products of their barren labor fall 

From their tired hands, and rest 

Never yet comes more near. 

Gloom settles slowly down over their breast. 

And while they try to stem 

The waves of mournful thought by which they are 

prest. 
Death in their prison reaches them, 
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. 

And the rest, a few. 

Escape their prison, and depart 

On the wide ocean of life anew. 

There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart 

Listeth, will sail; 

Nor doth he know how there prevail. 

Despotic on that sea. 

Trade-winds which cross it from eternity. 

Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred 



ing that In the great world of nature there is something which, though 
it cannot indeed satisfy the heart, still can teach us fortitude and instill 
into the soul a few drops of stoic grandeur."—^. H. Button. 



42 A SUMMER NIGHT 

By thwarting sig^ns, and braves 

The freshening- wind and blackening waves. 

And then the tempest strikes him; and between 

The lightning-bursts is seen 

Only a driving wreck, 

And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck 

With anguished face and flying hair, 

Grasping the rudder hard. 

Still bent to make some port, he knows not where, 

Still standing for some false, iiupossible shore. 

And sterner comes the roar 

Of sea and wind; and through the deepening gloom 

Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, 

And he too disappears, and comes no more. 

Is there no life, but these alone? 
Madman or slave, must man be one? 

Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! 

Clearness divine! 

Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign 

Of languor, though so calm, and though so great 

Are yet untroubled and unp)assionate; 

Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil. 

And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil! 

I will not say that your mild deeps retain 

A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain 

Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain; 

But I will rather say that you remain 

A world above man's head, to let him see 

How boundless might his soul's horizons be, 

How vast, yet of what clear transparency! 

How it were good to live there, and breathe free; 

How fair a lot to fill 

Is left to each man still! 



LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS 43 



Lines Written in Kensington Gardens ' 

In this lone, open g-lade I lie, 

Screened by deep boug-hs on either hand ; 

And at its end, to stay the eye. 

Those black-crowned, red-boiled pine-trees stand. 

Birds here make song', each bird has his, 

Across the girdling- city's hum. 

How green under the boughs it is! 

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! 

Sometimes a child will cross the glade 
To take his nurse his broken toy; 
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead 
Deep in her unknown day's employ. 

Here at my feet w^hat wonders pass! 
What endless, active life is here! 
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! 
An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear. 

Scarce fresher is the mountain sod 
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out, 
And, eased of basket and of rod, 
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. 

In the huge world which roars hard by, 

Be others happy if they can! 

But in my helpless cradle I 

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.^ 

1. Kensington Gardens are the grounds around Kensington Palace, 
in a western suburb of London. 

2. Pan : The Greek god of fields and woods. 



44 AtJSTEElTY OF POETKY 

I, on men's impious uproar hurled, 
Think often, as I hear them rave. 
That peace has left the upper world, 
And now keeps only in the grave. 

Yet here is peace forever new! 
When I who watch them am away, 
Still all things in this glade go through - 
The changes of their quiet day. 

Then to their happy rest they pass; 
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, 
The night comes down upon the grass. 
The child sleeps warmly in his bed. 

Calm soul of all things! make it mine 
To feel, amid the city's jar. 
That there abides a peace of thine, 
Man did not make, and cannot mar. 

The will to neither strive nor cry. 
The power to feel with others, give! 
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die 
Before I have begun to live. 

Austerity of Poetry 

That son of Italy ^ who tried to blow. 
Ere Dante ^ came, the trump of sacred song. 
In his light youth amid a festal throng 
Sate with his bride to see a public show. 

Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow 
Youth like a star; and what to youth belong, — 
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong. 
A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! Lo, 

1. Giacopone di Todi, an Italian poet. 

2. Dante degli Alighieri (1265-1321), the greatest Italian poet, 
author of the Div'ma Conimedia. 



THYESIS 45 

Mid struggling- sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! 
Shuddering, they drew her garments off— and found 
A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. 

Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay, 
Eadiant, adorned outside; a hidden ground 
Of thought and of austerity within. 

The Last Word 

Creep into thy narrow bed, — 
Creep, and let no more be said. 
Vain thy onset! all stands fast. 
Thou thyself must break at lact. 

Let the long contention cease! 
Geese are swans, and swans are geese. 
Let them haAC it how they will! 
Thou art tired: best be still. 

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee? 
Better men fared thus before thee; 
Fired their ringing shot, and passed, 
Hotly charged — and sank at last. 

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! 
Let the victors, when they come, 
When the forts of folly fall, 
Find thy body by the wall! 

Thyrsis ' 

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills! 
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same; 
The village street its haunted mansion lacks, 

1. Thyrsis, one of the noblest of English elegies, is the complement 
of The Scholar Gypsy, to which frequent reference is made throughout. 
The title indicates the classical character of the poem. Thyrsus is the 
name of a herdsman in one of Theocritus' Idyls : also, of a shepherd 



46 THYRSIS 

And from the sig-n is gone Sibylla's name, 

And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks.— 
Are ye too changed, ye hills? 

See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men 

To-night from Oxford up your pathway straj^s! 
Here came I often, often, in old days, — 

Thyrsis and I: we still had Thyrsis then. 

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm, 
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns 
The hill beyond whose ridge the sunset flames? 
The single-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs, 

The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful 
Thames? 
This wdnter-eve is warm; 
Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring, 

The tender purple spray on copse and briers; 
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, 
She needs not June for beauty's heightening. 

in Vergil's seventh Eclogue, who has a poetical contest with Corydon, 
another shepherd— hence the name is nsed to indicate any shepherd or 
rnslic. This poem is " one of the best of the snccessful English imita- 
tions of Bion and Moschus; among which Lycidas is most famous, 
though some question whether Swinburne in his Ave atqiie Vale has 
not surpassed them all. . . As a threnode, nothing comparable to it 
had then appeared since the Adonais of ^heWeyy—Sledman. " It is 
the lament of a loyal soul over one who had shared his ov/n deep 
ititimacy with nature in the dearest of all the quiet places of England 
to a scholarly mind ; of a baffled inquirer bereft of the partner of his 
researches ; of a steadfast soldier over the comrade who has fallen by 
his side in a doubtful battle ; of a man over his heart's friend. No 
wonder it appeals to many minds in many ways. Yet sincere as are 
the tones of personal sorrow in Thyrsis and exquisitely modulated, 
they merge in that cry of the suif erer from the 77ial du Steele which is 
the true theme of other elegies as well."—//. TF. Preston. 

This monody was written in commemoration of Arthur Hugh Clough, 
who died in Florence in 1861. He was an English poet, Arnold's 
friend at Ragby and Oxford, and like him a disciple of Wordsworth 
and influenced by the religious movement of the times. Lowell says 
of him : " We have a foreboding that Clough, imperfect as he was in 
many respects and dying before he had subdued his sensitive tempera- 
ment to the requirements of his art, will be thought a hundred years 



THYRSIS 41 

Lovely all times she lies, lovelj^ to-nig-lit! — 
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power 

Befalls me wandering- through this upland dim. 
Once passed I blindfold here, at any hour; 

Now seldom come I, since I came with him. 
That sing-le elm-tree bright 
Ag-ainst the west^ — I miss it! is it gone? 

We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, 

Our friend the Gypsj^-Scholar was not dead; 
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 

Too rare, too rare, g-row now my visits here, 

But once I knew each field, each flower, each 
stick; 
And with the country-folk acquaintance made 
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. 
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assayed. 
Ah me! this many a j^ear 
My pipe is lost, my shepherd's-holiday! 

Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart 
Into the world and wave of men depart, 
But Thyrsis of his own will went awa3^ 

hence to have been the truest expression in verse of the moral and 
intellectual tendencies, the doubt and struggle toward settled convic- 
tions of the period in which he lived." 

In Joseph Glanvil's (1636-80) Vanity of Dogmatizing occurs this 
passage: "There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, 
who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there ; and 
at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies. Among 
these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtlety of his carriage, 
he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they 
discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while 
exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of 
scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly 
spied out their old friend among the gypsies; and he gave them an 
account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told 
them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they 
were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among 
them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy 
binding that of others; that himself had^learned much of their art, and 
when he had compassed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave 
their company and give the world an account of what he had learned," 



48 THYRSIS 

It irked him to be here, he could not rest. 
He loved each simple joy the country yields, 

He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, 
For that a shadow lowered on the fields, 

Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. 
Some life of men unblest 
He knew, which made him droop, and filled his 
head. 
He went; his piping- took a troubled sound 
Of storms that rag-e outside our happy g-round; 
He could not wait their passing; he is dead. 

So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 

When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er. 

Before the roses and the longest day, — 
When garden-walks, and all the grassy fioor. 
With blossoms red and white of fallen May, 
And chestnut-flowers, are strewn, — 
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry. 

From the wet field, through the vexed garden- 
trees, 
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: 
The hloom is gone, and ivitli the bloom go I! 

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? 
Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on. 

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell. 
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 

Sweet-william with his homely cottage-smell. 
And stocks in fragrant blow; 
Eoses that down the alleys shine afar, 

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices. 

And groups under the dreaming garden-trees. 
And the full moon, and the white evening-star.^ 

1. Of the pictiires given in these two stanzas of wet and stormy 
English spring and soft deep English summer, Hutton says : " It would 



THYRSIS 49 

He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown! 
What matters it? next year he will return, 

And we shall have him in the sweet spring--days, 
With whitening- hedges, and uncrumpling- fern, 

And bluebells trembling by the forest-ways, 
And scent of hay new-mown. 
But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see, — 

See him come back, and cut a smoother reed. 

And blow a strain the world at last shall heed; 
For Time, not Corydon,^ hath conquered thee! 

Alack, for Corydon no rival now! — 

But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate. 

Some g-ood survivor with his flute would go, 
Piping a ditty sad for Bion's ^ fate; 

And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow. 
And relax Pluto's ^ brow, 
And make leap up with joy the beauteous head 

Of Proserpine,^ among whose crowned hair 

Are flowers first opened on Sicilian air. 
And flute his friend, like Orpheus,^ from the dead. 

De impossible to give with greater ease as well as delicacy a true 
picture of these scenes, and with it a subtle flavor of a real rest of 
spirit in them. . . Nor is this passage in any sense a peculiar instance 
of Mr. Arnold's flowing, lucid, and tender mode of painting nature. In 
all his descriptive passages— and they are many and beautiful— it is the 
same. He is never sanguine and bright, indeed, but the scene is 
always drawn with a subtle ease and grace, suggesting that it sprung up 
in the poet's imagination with as rapid and natural a growth as the 
strokes which delineate it before your eyes." 

1. Cf. note on Thyrsis. 

2. Bion : A Greek bucolic poet of the second century b. c, who is 
said to have died in Sicily by poison. 

3. According to Greek mythology, Pluto and Proserpine rule over 
the realm of shades. It was said that as Proserpine, the beautiful 
young daughter of Ceres, was gathering flowers in a meadow near 
Enna, her home in Sicily, she was seized by Pluto and borne to his 
dismal kingdom, there to reign with him. 

4. Cf. note on Memwial Verses. 



50 THYKSIS 

Oh, easy access to the hearer's grace 

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! 

For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, 
She knew the Dorian water's gush divine. 

She knew each lily white which Enna yields. 
Each rose with blushing face; 
She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. 

But ah! of our poor Thames she never heard; 

Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirred; 
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. 

Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be; 
Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour 

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topped hill I 
Who, if not I, for questing ^ here hath power ? 

I know the wood which hides the daffodil; 
I know the Fyfield tree; 
I know what white, what purple f ritillaries ^ 

The grassy harvest of the river-fields, 

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields; 
And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries; 

I know these slopes: who knows them if not I? 
But many a dingle on the loved hillside, 

With thorns once studded, old white-blossomed 
trees, 
Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried 
High towered the spikes of purple orchises. 
Hath since our day put by 
The coronals of that forgotten time; 

Down each green bank hath gone the plowboy's 

team. 
And only in the hidden brookside gleam 
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. 

1. Questing (L. qiicesUus) : Searching ; examining. 

2, Fritillaries : Common British plants of the genus Fritillaria. 



THYKSIS 51 

Where is the girl who by the boatman's door, 
Above the locks, above the boating- throng, 

Unmoored our skiff when through the Wytham 
flats, 
Ked loosestrife ^ and blond meadow-sweet among-, 
And darting- swallows and lig'ht water-gnats, 
We tracked the shy Thames shore? 
Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell 
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass, 
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass? — 
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well! 

Yes, thou. art gone! and round me too the night 
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. 
I see her veil draw soft across the day, 
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade 

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent 
with gray; 
I feel her finger light 
Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train,— 
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, 
The heart less bounding at emotion new. 
And hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again. 

And long the way appears, which seemed so short 
To the less-practiced eye of sanguine youth; 

And high the mountain tops, in cloudy air, — 
The mountain tops where is the throne of Truth, 

Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare! 
Unbreachable the fort 
Of the long-battered w^orld uplifts its wall; 

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows. 

And near and real the charm of thy repose. 
And night as welcome as a friend would fall. 

1. Loosestrife : A British plant sparingly naturalized in the United 
States. 



52 THYRSIS 

But hush! the upland hath a siidden loss 
Of quiet! Look, adown ^ the dusk hillside, 

A troop of Oxford hunters going* home. 
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride! 

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they 
come. 
Quick! let me fiy, and cross 
Into yon farther field! 'Tis done; and see, 
Backed by the sunset, which doth glorify 
The orange and pale violet evening-sky, 
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! 

I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil, 

The white fog creeps from bush to bush about. 

The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright. 
And in the scattered farms the lights come out. 
I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night. 
Yet, happy omen, hail! 
Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale ^ 

(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep 
The morningless and unawakening sleep 
Under the flowery oleanders pale) ; 

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there! — 

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim, 

These brambles pale with mist engarlanded. 
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him: 

To a boon ^ southern country he is fled. 
And now in happier air, 
Wandering with the great Mother's train divine 

(And purer or more subtle soul than thee, 

I trow, the mighty mother doth not see) 
Within a folding of the Apennine, — 

1. Adown : An archaic word, of which doivn is a Bhortened form. 

2. Arno : A celebrated river of Tuscany. 

3. Boon (L. bonus) : Used in its archaic sense of benign. 



THYRSIS 53 

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old! 
Putting- his sickle to the perilous g-rain 

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian ^ king, 
For thee the Litj^erses-song again 

Young- Daphnis ■" Avith his silver voice doth sing; 
Sings his Sicilian fold, 
His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes; 
And how a call celestial round him rang. 
And heavenward from the fountain-brink he 
sprang. 
And all the marvel of the golden skies. 

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here 
Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair. 

Despair I will not, while I yet descry 
'Neath the soft canopy of English air 

That lonely tree against the western sky. 
Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear, 
Our Gypsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee! 

Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay, 

Woods with anemones in flower till May, 
Know him a wanderer still; then why not me? 

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, 
Shy to illumine; and I seek it too. 

This does not come with houses or with gold, 



1. The Phrygian king : Lityerses, a son of Midas, said to have 
lived in Phrygia, wlio forced all strnngrers passing his fields to work at 
his harvest. Tf he surpassed them, he killed them and bound their 
bodies in the sheaves, over which a reaping-song was sung. As Daphnis 
was being put to the test Hercules arrived, overcame Lityerses in the 
contest, and killed him. The king's memory was preserved in a 
harvest-song called Lityerses. 

2. Daphnis : A Sicilian shepherd, son of Mercury by a nymph, who 
was taught by Pan to play on the flute. A nymph to whom Daphnis 
was faithless punished him with blindness, w^hereupon Mercury raised 
him to the skies and caused a fountain to spring up in the place from 
which he ascended. 



54 THYRSIS 

With place, with honor, and a flattering crew; 
'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold: 
But the smooth-slijDping weeks 

Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired; 
Out of the heed of mortals he is gone. 
He wends unfollowed, he must house alone; 

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. 

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound! 
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour. 

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest, 
If men esteemed thee feeble, gave thee power. 
If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest. 
And this rude Cumner ground, 
Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields. 
Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time, 
Here was thine height of strength, thy g'olden 
prime! 
And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields. 

What though the music of thy rustic flute 
Kept not for long its hapjDy, country tone; 

Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note 
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, 

Which tasked thy pij^e too sore, and tired thy 
throat — 
It failed, and thou wast mute! 
Yet hadst thou always visions of our light. 

And long with men of care thou couldst not stay, 
And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way. 
Left human haunt, and on alone till night. 

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here! 
'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore, 

Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-bells is my home. 
— Then through the great town's harsh, heart- 
wearying roar. 



MEMORIAL VERSES 55 

Let in thy voice a whisper often come, 
To chase fatigue and fear: 
" Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died. 
Koam on! The light we sought is shining still. 
Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the 
hill; 
Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside." 



Memorial Verses ^ 

APKIL, 1850 

Goethe in Weimar sleeps; and Greece, 
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease. 
But one such death remained to come: 
The last poetic voice is dumb, — 
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb. 

When Byron's eyes were shut in death, 
We bowed our head, and held our breath. 
He taught us little, but our soul 
Had fdt him like the thunder's roll. 
With shivering heart the strife we saw 
Of passion with eternal law; 
And yet with reverential awe 
We watched the fount of fiery life 
Which served for that Titanic strife. 



1 These Memorial Verses bring out salient points of three poets wlio 
had recently died— Byron, the pessimist poet, in 1824 ; Goethe, the 
greatest of German poets, in 1832, and Wordsworth, the nature-poet, in 
1850. The characteristics of Byron's and Goethe's genius are brought 
out with an insight and comprehensiveness unsurpassed in Arnold's 
best prose criticism. He praises Wordsworth for the power of exciting 
free, happy emotion which, indeed, he had; but the essential char- 
acteristic of Wordsworth's genius is higher and nobler— a recognition 
in nature of a mysterious kinship with man, investing her beauty and 
grandeur with spiritual meaning. 



56 MEMORIAL VEESES 

When Goethe's death was told, we said, — 

Sunk, then, is Europe's sag-est head. 

Physician of the iron age, 

Goethe has done his j)ilgriniage. 

He took the suffering* human race, 

He read each wound, each weakness clear; 

And struck his finger on the place, 

And said: TJiou ailest here, and here! 

He looked on Europe's dying hour 

Of fitful dream and feverish power; 

His eye plunged down the weltering strife, 

The turmoil of expiring life: 

He said: The end is eve^'p where, 

Art still has truth, take refuge there! 

And he was happy, if to know 

Causes of things, and far below 

His feet to see the lurid flow 

Of terror, and insane distress. 

And headlong fate, be happiness. 

And Wordsworth! Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! 
For never has such soothing voice 
Been to your shadowy world conveyed. 
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade 
Heard the clear song of Orpheus ^ come 
Through Hades and the mournful gloom. 
Wordsworth has gone from us; and ye. 
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! 
He too upon a wintry clime 
Had fallen, — on this iron time 

1. The clear song of Orpheus, etc.: Greek mythology tells us that 
Orpheus, having lost his wife, Eurydice, descended to Hades with the 
lute given him by Apollo, and his music so moved Pluto and Proser- 
pine that they consented to his wife's return to the upper world on 
condition that he would not look back at her until they had passed 
beyond the realm of shades. He disregarded the injunction, and so 
lost her forever. 



MEMORIAL VERSES 5^ 

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. 
He found us when the age had bound 
Our souls in its benumbing- round; 
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. 
He laid us as we lay at birth 
On the cool flowery lap of earth: 
Smiles broke from us, and we had ease; 
The hills were round us, and the breeze 
Went o'er the sunlit fields again; 
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. 
Our youth returned; for there w^as shed 
On spirits that had long been dead, 
Spirits dried up and closely furled, 
The freshness of the early world. 

Ah! since dark days still bring to light 
Man's prudence and man's fiery might, 
Time may restore us in his course 
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; 
But where will Europe's latter hour 
Again find Wordsworth's healing power? 
Others will teach us how to dare. 
And against fear our breast to steel: 
Others will strengthen us to bear — 
But who, ah! who will make us feel? 
The cloud of mortal destiny. 
Others will front it fearlessly; 
But who, like him, will put it by? 
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave, 
O Rotha,^ with thy living vs^ave! 
Sing him thy best! for few or none 
Hear thy voice right, now he is gone. 

1. Rotha or Rothay : A stream which empties into Lake Windermere 
near Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's home. 



58 RUGBY CHAPEL 

Rugby Chapel ' 
NOVEMBEK, 1857. 

Coldly, sadly descends 

The autumn evening-. The field 

Strewn with its dank yellow drifts 

Of withered leaves, and the elms, 

Fade into dimness apace, ^ 

Silent; hardly a shout 

From a few boys late at their play! 

The lights come out in the street, 

In the schoolroom windows; but cold, 

Solemn, unlig-hted, austere, 

Throug-h the g-athering- darkness, arise 

The chapel-walls, in whose bound 

Thou, my father! art laid. 

There thou dost lie, in the gloom 
Of the autumn evening. But ah! 
That word gloom to my mind 
Brings thee back in the light 
Of thy radiant vigor again. 

1. Rugby chapel : The short, unrhymed iambics and anapests un- 
familiar to English poetry, which Arnold used so effectively in The 
Strayed Reveler, are endowed with pathos in this beautiful tribute to 
the memory of his father. Thomas Arnold (1745-1842), during his 
fifteen years' headship of Rugby school, regenerated public-school edu- 
cation in England, mainly by force of his own noble personality. He 
communicated to his pupils his own sense of the value of knowledge a.nd 
the sacredness of duty. Cf. Tom Brown at Rugby. One who knew 
Dr. Arnold says that it was from his familiar customs on mountain 
walks, in which he would comfort the little ones in their falls, help the 
tired, and prove the guide and very life of the party— that his son draws 
imagery to sum up the lesson of his life as " a strong, hopeful, helpful 
soul, cheering and supporting his weaker comrades on their upward 
and onward way." 



RUGBY CHAPEL 59 

In the gloom of November we passed 

Days not dark at thy side; 

Seasons impaired not the ray 

Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear. 

Such thou wast! and I stand 

In the autumn evening-, and think 

Of byg-one autumns with thee. 

Fifteen years have gone round 

Since thou arosest to tread, 

In the summer-morning, the road 

Of death, at a call unforeseen, 

Sudden.^ For fifteen years. 

We who till then in thy shade 

Rested as under the boughs 

Of a mighty oak, have endured 

Sunshine and rain as we might. 

Bare, unshaded, alone, 

Lacking the shelter of thee. 

O strong soul, by what shore 

Tarriest thou now? For that force. 

Surely, has not been left vain! 

Somewhere, surely, afar. 

In the sounding labor-house vast 

Of being, is practiced that strength, 

Zealous, beneficent, firm! 

Yes, in some far-shining sphere, 

Conscious or not of the past, 

Still thou performest the word 

Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live. 

Prompt, unwearied, as here. 

1. Unforeseen, sudden : Dr. Arnold died suddenly June 12, 1842, of 
angina pectoris. 



60 RUGBY CHAPEL 

Still thou iipraisest with zeal 
The humble g-ood from the ground, 
Sternly repressest the bad; 
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse 
Those who with half-open eyes 
Tread the border-land dim 
'Twixt vice and virtue; reviv'st, 
SuccoresT. This was thy work, 
This was thy life upon earth. 

What is the course of the life 

Of mortal men on the earth? 

Most men eddy about 

Here and there, eat and drink. 

Chatter and love and hate. 

Gather and squander, are raised 

Aloft, are hurled in the dust. 

Striving blindly, achieving 

Nothing; and then they die, — 

Perish; and no one asks 

Who or what they have been. 

More than he asks what waves. 

In the moonlit solitudes mild 

Of the midmost ocean, have swelled, 

Foamed for a moment, and gone. 

And there are some whom a thirst 
Ardent, unquenchable, fires, 
Not with the crowd to be spent. 
Not without aim to go round 
In an eddy of purposeless dust. 
Effort unmeaning and vain. 
Ah yes! some of us strive 
Not without action to die 
Fruitless, but something to snatch 
From dull oblivion, nor all 
Glut the devouring grave. 



EUGBY CHAPEL 61 

We, we have chosen our path, — 
Path to a clear-purposed goal, 
Path of advance; bnt it leads 
A long, steep journey, through sunk 
Gorges, o'er mountains in snow. 
Cheerful, with friends, we set forth: 
Then, on the height, comes the storm. 
Thunder crashes from rock 
To rock; the cataracts reply; 
Lightning's dazzle our ej^es; 
Roaring torrents have breached 
The track; the stream-bed descends 
In the place where the w^ayfarer once 
Planted his footstep; the spray 
Boils o'er its borders; aloft. 
The unseen snow-beds dislodge 
Their hanging ruin. Alas! 
Havoc is made in o"ur train! 
Friends who set forth at our side 
Falter, are lost in the storm. 

We, we only are left! 
With frowning foreheads, with lips 
Sternly compressed, we strain on. 
On; and at nightfall at last 
Come to the end of our way. 
To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks; 
Where the gaunt and taciturn host 
Stands on the threshold, the wind 
Shaking his thin white hairs, 
Holds his lantern to scan 
Our storm-beat figures, and asks,— 
Whom in our party we bring? 
Whom w^e have left in the snow? 

Sadly w^e answer. We bring 
Only ourselves! we lost 



62 RUGBY CHAPEL 

Sight of the rest in the storm. 
Hardly ourselves we fought through, 
Stripped, without friends, as we are. 
Friends, companions, and train, 
The avalanche swept from our side. 

But thou wouldst not alone 
Be saved, my father! alone 
Conquer and come to thy goal, 
Leaving the rest in the wild. 
We were weary, and we 
Fearful, and we in our march 
Fain to drop down and to die. 
Still thou turnedst, and still 
Beckonedst the trembler, and still 
Gavest the weary thy hand. 
If, in the paths of the world. 
Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
Toil or dejection have tried 
Thy spirit, of that we saw 
Nothing: to us thou wast still 
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! 
Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself; 
And, at the end of thy day, 
O faithful shepherd! to come, 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

And through thee I believe 

In the noble and great who are gone; 

Pure souls honored and blest 

By former ages, who else — 

Such, so soulless, so poor. 

Is the race of men whom I see — 

Seemed but a dream of the heart, 

Seemed but a cry of desire. 



RUGBY CHAPEL 63 

Yes! I believe that there lived 
Others like thee in the past, 
JVot like the men of the crowd 
Who all round me to-day 
Bluster or cringe, and make life 
Hideous and arid and vile; 
But souls tempered with fire, 
Fervent, heroic, and good. 
Helpers and friends of mankind. 

Servants of God! ^ — or sons 

Shall I not call you? because / 

Not as servants ye knew 

Your Father's innermost mind. 

His who unwillingly sees 

One of his little ones lost, — 

Yours is the praise, if mankind 

Hath not as yet in its march 

Fainted and fallen and died. 

See! In the rocks of the world 

Marches the host of mankind, 

A feeble, wavering line. 

Where are they tending? A God 

Marshaled them, gave them their goal. 

Ah, but the way is so long! 

Years they have been in the wild: 
Sore thirst plagues them; the rocks. 
Rising all round, overawe; 
Factions divide them; their host 
Threatens to break, to dissolve. 
Ah! keep, keep them combined! 
Else, of the myriads who fill 

1. Servants of God : Cf. John sv. 15. 



64 RUGBY CHAPEL 

That army, not one shall arrive; 
Sole they shall stray; on the rocks 
Batter forever in vain, 
Die one by one in the waste. 

Then, in such hour of need 

Of your fainting, dispirited race, 

Ye like ang-els appear, 

Eadiant with ardor divine. 

Beacons of hope, ye appear! 

Lang-uor is not in your heart, 

Weakness is not in your word. 

Weariness not on your brow. 

Ye alight in our van! at your voice, 

Panic, despair, flee away. 

Ye move through the ranks, recall 

The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 

Praise, re-inspire the brave. 

Order, courage, return; 

Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 

Follow your steps as ye go. 

Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 

Strengthen the wavering*- line, 

Stablish,^ continue our march, 

On, to the bound of the waste, 

On, to the City of God. 

1. Stablish (Archaic) : Make stable ; establish. 



English Classic Series-continued. 

The Antigone of Sophocl o a rf T l O? Mandeville's Travels and Wy- 



English Version by Thos. Franck/ 
lin, D.D. _ 

l64 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
i (Selected Poems.) 

^ 65 Robert Browning, (Selected 
Poems.) 
~ +66 Addison's Spectator. (Selec'ns.) 

67 Scenes from George Eliot's 
Adam Bede. 

68 Matthew Arnold's Culture and 
Anarchy. 

69 DeQuincey's Joan of Arc. 

70 Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

71 Byron's Chllde Harold's Pil- 
grimage. 

73 Foe's Raven, and other Poems. 

73 & 74 Macaulay's liOrd Cllve./ i 

(Double Number.) "7^ 1 

75 Webster's Reply to Hayne. ±^ ' 
- ^-76 & 77 Macaulay's I<ays of Atf^ 

clent Rome. (Double Number.)! 

78 American Patriotic Selections: 
Declaration of Independence, 
Washington's Farewell Ad- 
dress, Lincoln's Gettysburg 
Speech, etc. 

79 & 80 Scott's Lady of the Lake. 
((Condensed.) 

81 & 83 Scott's Marmlon. (CTon- 

densed.) 
83 & 84 Pope's Essay on Man. 
85 Shelley's Skylark, Adonals, and 



other Poems 
86 Dickens's Cricket 
Hearth 



the 



87 Spencer's Philosophy of Stytor^- 137-38 Scott's Ivanhoe 



clift'e's Bible. (Selections.) 

108-109 Macaulay's Essay on Fred- 
erick the Great. 

110-111 Milton's Samson Agonls- 
tes. I 

113-113-114 Franklin's Autobiog- 
raphy. 

115-116 Herodotus's Stories of 
Croesus, Cyrus, and Babylon. 

117 Irving' 8 Alhambra. 

118 Burke's Present Discontents. 

119 Burke's Speech on Concilia- 
tion with American Colonies. 

120 Macaulay's Essay on Byron. 
131-133 Motley's Peter the Great. 

133 Emerson's American Scholar. 

134 Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum. 
35-136 Longfellow's Evangeline. 

137 Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales. 
(Selected.) 

138 Tennyson's The Coming of 
Arthur, and The Passing of 
Arthur. 

139 Lowell's The Vision of Sir 
Launfal, and other Poems. 

130 Whittier's Songs of Labor, and 
other Poems. 

131 Words of Abraham Lincoln. 
133 Grimm's German Fairy Tales. 

(Selected.) 

133 ^sop's Fables. (Selected.) 
"--4l34 Arabian Nights. Aladdin, or 



the Wonderful Lamp. 
135-36 The Psalter. 



(Con- 



88 Lamb's Essays of Ella. 

89 Cowper's Task, Book XL 

90 Wordsworth's Selected Poems, 



densed.) 
-139-40 Scott's 

densed.) 



Sir Galahad 
93 Addison's Cato. 

93 Irving's Westminster 

and Christmas Sketches. 

94 & 95 Macaulay's Earl ,of Chat- 

ham. Second Essay. 

96 Early English Ballads. 

97 Skelton, Wyatt, and Surrey* 

(Selected Poems.) .-« 

98 Edwin Arnold. (Selected Poems.) 

99 Caxton and Daniel. (Selections.) 

100 Fuller and Hooker. (Selections.) 

101 Marlowe's Jew of Malta. (Con- 

densed.) 

103-103 Macaulay's Essay on Mil- 
ton. 

104-105 Macaulay's Essay on Ad- 
dison. 

106 Macaulay's Essay on Bos- 
well's Johnson. 



Kenilworth. (Con- 



91 Tennyson's The Holy Grail, an*-4l41-43 Scott's The Talisman. (Con- 
densed.) 
143 Gods and Heroes of the North. 
AbbeyyiI44-4 5 Pope's Iliad of Honfcr. 

(Selections from Books I.-VIII.) 

146 Four Medifeval Chroniclers. 

147 Dante's Inferno. (Condensed.) 
148-49 The Book of Job. (Revised 

Version.) 

150 Bow-Wow and Mew-Mew. By 
Georgiana M. Craik. 

151 The NUrnberg Stove. By Ouida. 
153 Hayne's Speech. To which 

Webster replied. 
153 Alice's Adventures in Won- 
derland. (Condensed.) By Lewis 
Carroll. 
154-155 Defoe's Journal of the 

Plague. (Condensed.) 
156-157 More's Utopia. (Con- 
densed.) 



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158-159 liamb's Essays. (St 

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160-161 Burke's Reflections 

the French Revolution. 
162-163 Macaulay's History of 

England, Chapter I. Coviplete. 
164-165-166 I'rescott's Conquest 

of Mexico. (Condensed.) 

167 L-ongfellow's Voices of the 

Night, and other poems. 

168 Hawthorne's Wonder Book. 

Selected Tales. 

169 De^^uincey's Flight of a Tar- 

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170-171-173 George Eliot's Silas 
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173 Raskin's King of the Golden 
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174-175 Irving's Tales of a Trav- 
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176 Ruskin's Of Kings* Treasuries. 

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194 Emerson's Compensation. 
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XXIV. 
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203 Hawthorne's Snow-Image, 
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204 Poe's Gold Bug. 




014 387 195 2 



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210 BroAvning's Saul, and other 
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